Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

Rip almost had to stop himself from laughing as they clawed and clawed at the water with the canoe barely moving. This is crazy. Just a silly misunderstanding. A temporary hell, he thought, like childbirth. All would be good in the end, once they got back and ate some food, had a few beers. He’d make Michael understand.

He could smell the sour scent of his nervous sweat.

The frogs and the cicadas grew louder. A relentless, grinding, buzzing chorus.

Then he felt it. A hot trickle on his feet.

Hank sighed. Rip caught the rising scent of his son’s urine.

“It’s okay, my special guy,” he said. “Daddy’s here. He’s got you.”

The car rideto the supermarket had been puke-free. So far, Susanna thought.

As Allie drove, Susanna listened to her talk a mile a minute about how intense the mommies were and what the hell were GMOs ? And why was Tiffany so against GMOs ? And what was up with Rip, could he be gay ?

Susanna nodded and answered in short responses. GMOS were Genetically Modified foods. Tiffany was an extreme domestic sancti-mommy. No, Rip was not gay. Just strange.

She used the opportunity to check her savings account on her phone.

The balance was $4,250. It wasn’t much, she thought, but her business was just getting off the ground. She’d scored her first big rental, a Swiss family with three kids under five, who would visit their Brooklyn cousins that fall and had booked a double stroller, three car seats, and two portable cribs. For a whole month! Things were sure to pick up in the spring, when the weather warmed.

Then she remembered. There would be the baby to take care of, which would create at least a six-month distraction from building the business. She could hire a part-time babysitter. Tenzin was lovely — but that would spend money meant for their future home. If only Allie were more interested in pitching in with the child care. If only Allie were more interested in general. Honestly, Susanna thought, even the most disinterested daddies, like Nicole’s husband Josh, were more invested then Allie.

The car hit a bump, and Susannah’s belly slapped against her thighs. Fuck! She rubbed her bump, an apology to the baby for the shock, and for swearing. Even if it was only in her head. She’d read many an article on pregnancy that warned stress and general negativity had a harmful effect on a life in utero . And although Susanna took little Tiffany said seriously, there was that study Tiffany had mentioned not long ago, linking stress to an elevated level of testosterone in a pregnant woman’s blood, which just might be responsible for the dramatic increase in Autism and ADHD. As Tiffany had lectured the rapt parents, Susanna had felt her heart beat faster, as if her body temperature were rising right then, as if she could feel her stress level rocketing. She had imagined the endorphins pinballing the testosterone, setting off a toxic rainstorm in her uterus.

So she’d taken to apologizing to the baby each time she cursed. A miniantidote, she hoped. Just like the swear jar her Midwestern mother had kept on the corner of the kitchen counter. A nickel had clinked into the jar for every cussword.

The automatic doors of the Shop & Stop whirred open, and Susanna was reminded of the magical efficiency of suburbia. Ice-cold central air. Starbucks drive-thrus.

Allie veered left toward the dairy aisle and picked up her pace, waving her grocery list, “I’ll knock this out fast, babe. You just chill, and I’ll meet you at the checkout in a few, okay?”

“Okay,” Susanna said as she eyed the few shoppers; an older woman in a housecoat and a few kids trailing their mother, their faces pressed to handheld video games. Had they heard Allie call her babe? Had they reacted? This wasn’t the city, after all, as Allie was always reminding her, using it as the principal reason they could not never ever move out of city; there wasn’t much love of gays in the ’burbs.

No, Susanna decided. No reaction from the other shoppers. Just a slow, shuffled browsing in time to the mellow Muzak piped from some unknown place above. What song was it? She knew she had heard it before.

She entered an aisle. The order and predictability of the grid was a comfort, the very opposite of the fear she’d had as a little girl of losing her mother in what had felt like a never-ending maze of sky-high walls.

The brightly colored packages popped in Technicolor under the fluorescent lights. The endless assortment (who knew there were enough kinds of crackers to take up an entire aisle?) and the rainbow of little flags dotting the aisle with cheery optimism (SALE! BUY ONE, GET TWO!) emboldened Susanna, and she found a corner by the cereal boxes where her phone had three bars of access. She opened Citibank’s mobile app and made a transfer from their shared checking to her secret savings account.

$1,000. Click. Done.

The balance was now $5,250. Much better, Susanna thought.

She knew Allie would never know. Allie was too “artistic” to be bothered with the tedium of bill paying. Allie, who had her head up her ass these days, or to be more accurate, her phone in her face. E-mailing clients and instant messaging her agent. Texting her irresponsible, childless friends. Which Allie had the nerve to call networking! Maybe even, Susanna dared to think it, texting a lover? A student from one of her Parsons classes. Hadn’t Susanna been Allie’s student once?

No, Susanna thought, she would stay positive. Just as Tenzin had suggested that morning as they walked on the beach, a prebreakfast romp, the boys running ahead, sticks of driftwood raised above their sandy heads. The kind of nature-filled childhood they deserved.

“It is good for the baby,” Tenzin had said. “To stay calm. As the great Dalai Lama says, Choose to be optimistic, it feels better. ”

This had filled Susanna with an instant panic. She had been so stressed, so worried, so angry all the time. What if it had hurt the baby?

“You will be okay,” Tenzin had said, as if she could read Susanna’s thoughts, rubbing Susanna’s newly rounded shoulders with her man-sized hand. “You are a good person. I can tell.”

Yes, Susanna thought now as she maneuvered her belly through the aisles, I am a good person. Then she found her destination.

The produce glowed under the lights. The vegetables and fruit in the overpriced organic market in Brooklyn seem dull and shriveled in comparison. And the smells! Tomatoes that smelled of basil. Cantaloupes that smelled like honey. Peaches that actually smelled like peaches. The perfume felt like a hug from a great old friend. She hadn’t been able to walk past the grimy Met Food near their apartment in months. The stench of rotting food had made her gag. But this, this was heavenly, and it was as if the baby could smell it, too, because he/she jerked, and the skin of Susanna’s belly rippled with delight.

This was what she needed, what the boys needed, what their new baby needed, and even if Allie couldn’t see it, this was what Allie needed.

Fall was just around the corner, Susanna thought as she caressed the fuzzed skin of an apricot. The scent of wet leaves in the woods on a rainy day. The patter of drops on the roof, so present when there were no other sounds to drown it out — no sirens, no cab horns, no shouting on the street. The scent of fire smoke rising off crackling hearths and bonfires on the beach and fire pits in the backyard that had always reminded her of homecoming, of powder-puff football. She had been a runner-up for Homecoming Court queen her senior year, which had been one of the few backstory details she had kept from Allie, until Susanna’s mother had mentioned it at the first family dinner Allie had attended. As in, Susanna had translated to Allie later, how could her precious baby girl Susie be a dyke, when she’d almost been the homecoming queen ?